Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN – OUR COMPANY. LENINGRAD MEETINGS (TATYANA AND OLGA)
Mila and Sasha were nice girls. They had very nice parents, a wonderful dog – a black Great Dane Greta, and good friends. With their company, we went for a walk in the park on Vasilevskiy Island and in the forest to fry kebabs in Georgian style.
A funny story happened in the park. They sold the famous cream donuts there. The price was five kopecks apiece. Buying ten crumpets for the whole company was a trifle – fifty kopecks in Tbilisi was not considered “the money”.
I decided to treat the whole company. I took out a fifty-kopeck piece, put it on the counter like on a playing board, moved it towards the saleswoman and said,
“For all the money, please,” and added for fun, “One hundred pieces!”
Not a single muscle moved on the saleswoman’s stony face. With the movement of a chess grandmaster, she moved the fifty-kopeck piece back to me and explained,
“A donut costs five kopecks apiece. For fifty kopeks I can sell no more than ten pieces.”
“Great!” I said, “No more and no less. Just for fifty kopecks.”
The finger slowly moved the fifty-kopeck piece towards the stern counter worker. But I couldn’t resist, I smiled and added, “A hundred pieces!”
A light crimson hue appeared on the woman’s wide cheekbones. I don’t know what motivated her reaction. I don’t think she played in CFI (Club Funny and Inventive people), wrote humorous stories; she probably just mocked me in response. And I would have taken it for granted, but it seemed that some signals did not converge with others in her mind, so the meaning of the words eluded her. Moving the fifty-kopeck piece with her finger across the counter, the saleswoman again rejected my order.
“Citizen!” she said without a hint of anger, “You don’t understand arithmetic. But I can’t give you a hundred donuts for fifty kopecks!”
“Do not give!” the spectators shouted, losing all their patience, “He asks for fifty kopeks, give him for fifty!”
“But for fifty kopeks you can only have ten donuts!”
“Give him ten donuts!” the crowd demanded.
“But he asks for a hundred!” the saleswoman made excuses.
“Don’t give him a hundred! Do Not Give!” the audience chanted.
“I’ll kick everybody’s donuts now!” the worker with tattoos threatened, “Call the police!”
“Citizen, are you ready to get ten donuts for your fifty kopek?” the saleswoman finally formulated her thought.
“Of course! Always ready!” I answered with the pioneer salute.
It was time to end the long-running comedy and finally to taste the famous Leningrad donuts.
I really wanted to try the unusually shaped ice cream that kept flashing in the hands of passers-by. It was shaped like a wafer cone filled with ice cream. Judging by the bites, the waffle was very crispy while the ice cream – of high quality. I didn’t know what it was called, and I was afraid to ask about “cone-shaped” – I’d run into trouble with such a complex word! For simplicity, I asked,
“Do you have triangle ice cream?”
And I always received an indifferent answer: “No.” Not a single salesman or saleswoman ever asked what I was looking for or what I meant. In my city, any merchant in a similar situation with a guest would have asked me a bunch of counter questions, not to mention additional questions about my place of residence, the reasons, circumstances and impressions of my visit.
Here everyone limited themselves to dry denial, and I understood that I was looking for something very tasty and rare and therefore quickly disappearing.
But one day I noticed how a passerby bought ice cream from a tray, which I had been hunting for a long time. Rejoicing, I asked the saleswoman for one triangular ice cream and in response I heard the familiar “I don’t have it!”
“Why “don’t”, when, look, the guy just bought it!”
“Not at all! He bought the Sugar Tube!”
I just had a tube inserted, you know where. I was amazed, but at the same time happy – I paid for knowledge. Victoriously crunching a wonderful waffle cone filled with excellent ice cream, I was digesting the situation along with the ice cream. Of course, I called the product incorrectly, but look at the cone, is it a tube? And isn’t its drawing or its shadow, if you like, a triangle?
Or maybe the problem was in a certain mentality brought up in us – to name things abstractly, and not in essence, so that no one would guess about anything? For example, a minority of delegates called themselves Bolsheviks, for others to believe that they are the majority.
After all, I was in a special city – the cradle of the Russian Revolution.
“SO SHE WAS CALLED TATYANA…”
(Famous line from A. Pushkin’s poem “Yevgeny Onegin”)
I must say that Denis and I immediately liked the cradle. “Liked” wasn’t even the right word. I was in awe of the beauty of the architecture and masterpieces of art collected here. Perhaps if I didn’t love my hometown so much, I would want to move here. But a place of residence is not only architecture and art, it is people, memories, customs and even climate. In a word, we absorbed the Leningrad views and enjoyed ourselves. Every day we went to a museum or visited a country palace. And only the absence of a girlfriend in the northern regions, where sex was not taboo for women, worried me. Whenever possible I talked about this topic with the girls. Mila usually giggled, and Sasha openly described any intimate details, as if she were my classmate. But one day she told me,
“If we don’t stop discussing sex, it will end in real sex, and I wouldn’t want to cheat on my fiancé without a good reason.”
“Do not cheat!” I said, “What kind of guy is pleased when his fiancée cheats on him without a serious reason? Even with a serious reason, it’s unpleasant.”
“Well, then I won’t. But I know how to help you.”
“And how?”
“I’ll introduce someone to you. One of my friends returned from vacation. She is a nurse, her name is Tatyana Larina! Name is exactly like the character’s name from Pushkin’s novel “Evgeniy Onegin”. She and Mila once did gymnastics together. A very likeable girl. She’ll like you right away – you’ll see it for yourself.
That same day I called Tanya, and we agreed to take a walk in Tsarskoye Selo (King’s Village) tomorrow. By that time, Denis had left for the sea, and the hostess lodged instead of him Lambert, an excavator operator from Tallinn, who studied construction in Leningrad by correspondence and came here to the session in the summer. We quickly became friends with this simple guy, which turned out to be beneficial for both of us. More on that below, but for now, in the morning I went to the station to meet Tanya.
She turned out to be a very pretty brunette, with a short fashionable bob haircut, with a chiseled figure, elegantly dressed and, it seemed to me, with sad brown eyes, like those of the actress Neyolova. We spent the day with Tanya, walking and talking, in places where young Pushkin was lucky to comprehend poetry and love. On this day I was also lucky, and, as you might guess, not in comprehending poetry. We went to Tanya’s house. She flatly refused the restaurant.
“The food should be homey, and the sex should be wild,” she said.
I didn’t mind it. However, I did not expect that Tanya would feed me like slaughter. She laid out the table with various delicacies, heated up some pretty tasty cutlets of enormous size and tried to feed me with two of them. I politely refused, so as not to offend the hostess. Tanya laughed,
“Men are like babies: they eat little, scream loudly, suck poorly and fart at night. Do you know the proverb? He who eats poorly works poorly.”
I was not worried, my experience spoke of the independence of different desires. I had my first full adult sex on an empty stomach after returning from a five-day hike in the mountains.
I must say that Tanya turned out to be a very frank woman in love. She was not shy about anything, happily came up with all sorts of “stuff” and freely accepted any of the most intricate positions.
“A real woman acrobat,” I praised her flexibility and plasticity.
“I didn’t do acrobatics, but I grew up to the first category in gymnastics, until the coach kicked me out of the section.”
“How was it, kicked you out?”
“Like this! At first he raped me, and then, so as not to make noise, he kicked me out, well, he transferred me to another sports society, but I had already decided to go to a nurse school.”
“Were you very depressed?”
“Only at the beginning, and that’s because he didn’t even kiss me, didn’t ask if I wanted it. If he had said even one kind word, I would have done anything for him, he was so handsome and strong. He got his pleasure and then threw me away like a two-kopeck rubber condom. And later, when I was already working as a nurse, I met him, aged and drunk, and even felt sorry for him.”
“Your story is sad,” I sympathized with Tanya.
“Others have it worse. Let’s think up some fun!”
And we had fun again and again until we fell asleep in the morning.
The alarm woke us up – Tanya had to go to work. She opened the closet and carefully selected beautiful things from the wardrobe.
“You can stay asleep. Food is in the refrigerator. But remember, at three o’clock you must leave the apartment.”
“Why? Won’t we see each other tonight?”
“Not tonight. This day belongs to Anton Ivanovich.”
“Who is this?”
“Well… my lover.”
“Who am I then?”
“You are my Love.”
“Why didn’t you tell about him right away?”
“What for? If you had found out about Anton Ivanovich, you would have been offended and left. And so we had a great time both day and night. I will recall you many more times when Anton rips me open with his club.”
“So you don’t feel good with him? Why don’t you end this relationship?”
“You, Nick, know so many things, but… not life. Who will pay for the apartment, services, outfits, taxis? Stocking the refrigerator with delicacies, bringing scarce tickets to the theater and concerts? Do you think a nurse can afford this on her salary? This means either to have clients or to be a kept woman. I chose the second choice.”
“I have to think about everything,” I said, quickly getting dressed.
I could neither stay here to sleep nor eat Anton Ivanovich’s delicacies. The cats scratched at my soul, I was discouraged by this turn of events. It kind of reminded me of Tanya’s story, in which the coach didn’t ask her either. Of course, I agreed to an intimate relationship, but not to a threesome game. Apparently, these thoughts were reflected on my face. Tanya came up to me and kissed me.
“I understand everything,” she said. “If you don’t come back, I won’t be offended, I’ll just remember our unexpected and wonderful meeting.”
What to say? I didn’t come back. I even tried to forget how I played Pushkin in Tsarskoe Selo with modern Tatyana Larina. But despite the passing of the years, I still remember her sad, brown eyes, like those of the actress Neyolova…
“AH, OLGA…”
(Famous aria from Tchaikovsky’s opera “Yevgeny Onegin” after A. Pushkin’s novel)
I must admit that I did not have time to be very upset after the breakup with Tatyana. You will laugh. On the same day, it was not Sasha, but Mila, who introduced me to Olga! Of course, not with Olga Larina. Olga’s last name was Gerb (which means Coat of Arms in Russian). As she herself joked,
“A hammer – for the factories, a sickle – for the farms –
In front of you is dearest the Soviet Coat of Arms!”
But even though I knew the continuation,
“Reap and forge without sleep and without quit
Anyway in any case you won’t get a shit!”
I hoped for a better outcome of my courtship.
The poetic theme that began in Tsarskoe Selo continued in Leningrad – I dragged Olga around Pushkin’s places. I recently met a researcher at the Pushkin House Museum on the Moika-street, Misha Berg, who was captivated by my knowledge of Pushkin’s jokes. I had at home a very rare and beloved book by Andrei Kruchenykh, published in 1924, about “shifts” in Pushkin’s poetry. I knew from this book a bunch of the poet’s puns that Misha had accepted with excitement, for example,
“The clock will strike, the cock will spike,
A maiden turns into whore-like.
And day of real bliss will come,
When Virgo finally will cum.”
And Misha, in turn, gave an amazing tour and told me many unknown details about Pushkin’s life. The story was interesting and beautiful, although his language seemed too sophisticated to me, filled with epithets and metaphors. Following fresh events, I passed on my new knowledge to Olga.
In addition, I had time to study physics with Lambert, my neighbor in the rented apartment. I coached him to take the exam – it was easy and familiar to me, and he was happy like a child – for the first time in his life he studied one-on-one with a teacher.
And all the seemingly unrelated characters came together in one story. Olga told me that the financial department where she worked was organizing a weekend bus tour to Pärnu, Estonia, to purchase Estonian goods and products. If I want, I can join them – she will include me in the list of the tourists.
I consulted with Lambert, who had already successfully passed physics and was cramming something else.
“There are the sea and pine trees in Pärnu, which is beautiful, but there’s nothing to do. You need to go to Tallinn to have fun. If you want, I’ll call my wife and she’ll get you settled in for the night.
It sounded tempting, and I shared the idea with Olga.
“I’ll try to persuade my parents,” she said, and she persuaded them.
“How long did it take you to persuade them?” I asked Olga on the bus.
“Not long. Dad waved his hand, and said,”
“You’re already an adult, decide for yourself with whom and where to go!”
And my mother said,
“Of course, it would be good if you were going to Tallinn on a honeymoon, but in your time the order of events is often unpredictable. It would be good to have registration-travel-pregnancy, but travel-pregnancy-registration is also not the worst option. And what do you think about this?”
A wave of anxious foreboding washed over me, like over the animal that was about to be surrounded by beaters. Damn it, why can’t you directly say to a girl,
“I like you, and I want to make love with you.”
And the girl will answer, “So do I,” without any matrimonial approaches.
Well, I don’t want to get married and have children. I do not want it yet! And life somehow plays hide and seek with me: first I look for them, then they look for me. I wonder, will we ever find each other?
I somehow calmed myself down.
“I don’t think anything,” I answered, “It’s too early for me to get married. A lot of marriages fall apart when it turns out that the spouses are not yet ready for married life. Feelings alone are not enough.”
I couldn’t, following the example of my acquaintances, openly lie to a girl about how much I love her more than life itself (cheap melodrama!), and having achieved reciprocity, explain how I suddenly realized that I had lost interest in her. One philologist I know, Zhenya Galstyan, with whom I played gallows at university during lectures on the history of the CPSU, said,
“A primitive scheme: to love her, to have her and to leave her, but how wonderful it works!”
“Listen, Zhenya, but you lie to every girl, after all!”
“To be honest, I don’t know. Maybe I’m lying, maybe I’m not. I can’t figure it out myself. But when I say that I’ve fallen out of love, it’s absolutely true. So in the end of the day I am honest with women.”
I had nothing to argue with him. Edik from my class, having a beautiful and smart wife, was always hanging out with some train station whores and at the same time admitted,
“Whoever I sleep with, I love her. I’m still immature.”
What’s now? Not to go to Tallinn, when everything is settled with the apartment? At the very least, we will spend the night chastely. I didn’t want to have a child growing up without a dad, even in the wonderful city of Leningrad.
It was indeed beautiful in Pärnu, but despite it being August, it was already quite cool and it was drizzling from the sky. We hugged our way to the bus station and drove off to Tallinn, towards an unknown fate. I liked the way Estonian intercity bus drivers greeted each other with legionnaire gestures.
“Great!” I thought, “This is a united team!”
I have never seen anything like this either in Georgia or in Russia.
I immediately liked Tallinn. A cozy small city built for the convenience of people. For their pleasure, not just their existence. The restaurant where we went was also not only pretty designed, but also cozy. A lamp in a colored glass lampshade lowered down to the table itself and shone only for us, leaving other visitors in a mysterious semi-darkness. The waiters were hospitable and friendly, without rudeness or subservience.
I realized that Russians are disliked in Tallinn much stronger than in Transcaucasia. Nobody wanted to speak Russian, even those who knew how. We would never have gotten into the restaurant if I had not shown theatrical resourcefulness. I asked Olga to keep quiet and not try to “pump up her rights” in the proletarian way, and I myself spoke to those around me in Georgian. Then the Estonians understood that we were not Russians, and their attitude towards us changed dramatically. Both they and I switched to Russian language, and we conversed as representatives of sovereign countries using a respected communication tool. So, in an instant, the “occupiers” became guests.
Already in the dark, Olga and I reached the desired address. Vera, a modest Russian woman, Lambert’s wife, opened the door for us.
“I was already worried that you had changed your mind,” she said, “My little son is spending the night with his grandmother, and I’ll go to them now too. Make yourself at home. I made a bed for you together on our sofa, but if necessary, I’ll also open up a folding bed.”
Olga withstood the hostess’s stern, appraising gaze.
“No, thank you, we’ll sleep on the sofa.”
“We don’t have good amenities. Come back in a year, the new apartment will be ready. In the meantime, the toilet and shower are along the corridor, but if you want to wash yourself quickly or… in case of night peeing, use this basin.”
We were left alone, took off our clothes, and crawled under the sheet. Olga’s teeth were trembling, making a drumroll.
“Are you scared?” I asked.
“I’m afraid that I won’t succeed.”
“And what should you do?” I was surprised. I always thought that a man should succeed.
“You know, Nick, I have to tell you something.”
“Lord,” I thought, “Not Anton Ivanovich!”
“I once tried to give myself to a man, but everything inside seemed to be squeezed as in a vice. Well, you understand where it was. My boyfriend couldn’t even get his little finger in.”
I calmed Olga down as best I could. I kissed her, stroked her, persuaded her not to be afraid. She’s in no danger! I won’t hurt her and I won’t do anything against her wishes. I tried to gently touch her clitoris, as Tanya advised back in the sixth grade – nonsense!
Olga trembled like little Nick, whose throat was being picked by Doctor Gonia with his surgical fingers. I tried it – not with my fingers, and only got to the point where I was completely aroused by friction against this small, dry and hot mound and wet the sheet with my own sperm. One thing was certain, Olga told the truth – there was no accessible entrance to her vagina. I even asked if this entrance is even sometimes open. Well, on holidays, for example. She started laughing and said that the entrance was always open, except for the two most important times.
I didn’t know how to help her. We lay there, hugging each other like old loving spouses, comforting each other in family grief, until in the morning we tired and fell asleep.
At eleven I woke up from someone’s steps. It was Vera.
“I forgot to leave you the key,” she said. “I’ll leave now, and Nick will give the key to Lambert in Leningrad.”
“Don’t worry,” Olga said. “We should be heading back at noon.”
That’s what we did.
While Olga was washing her face, Vera was collecting laundry from the sofa. She apparently noticed the stains on the sheet and couldn’t help but comment.
“Yesterday it seemed to me that Olga was an innocent girl, I even offered to open the folding bed for you and let you sleep separately.” People give deceptive impressions, but things never lie.”
“They do lie!” I said, “You understood everything correctly, it just didn’t work out for me.”
“I see by the stains that everything worked out for you. Olga… right?”
I nodded silently.
“Spasms? And you didn’t know how to cure them?”
“How?” I barely squeezed out, overpowering the spasms in my throat.
“With the tongue! Oh, you children, children!”
We’re back home. Olga had to go to work, and I had to get ready to leave for Odessa.
“I’ll write to you,” She said, “We didn’t have enough time for love, but maybe we’ll meet again. It seems to me that I should succeed.”
“It will definitely work! I’m sure. Write to me.”
I loved corresponding, especially with girls.
And I flew to self, to south. Olga wrote me. About the fact that she was at the Moika and met with my friend Misha Berg. About Pushkin’s wonderful puns, which he unexpectedly discovered in an antique edition of Andrei Kruchenykh from 1924.
For example this one:
“The clock will strike, the cock will spike,
A maiden turns into whore-like.
And day of real bliss will come,
When Virgo finally will cum.”
About how he laughed when he found out that Olga’s last name was Gerb. In a word, they really liked each other, and everything worked out for them…
“Tili-bom, tili-bom, Berg-met-Gerb or Gerb-met Berg!” Here you are, the pun! But I wasn’t surprised. I remembered how well Misha led the tour. He had a good suspended tongue, that’s for sure.
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